Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 27

= June 27 =

superscripts in abbreviations
In handwriting of the 18th and 19th c., you see abbreviations where the last part of the word is superscript: Mr Thos Quaintname. A relic of this practice is in ordinal numbers: 27th. My question: Does any style guide positively prefer superscripting to flat writing, 27th? Or do I see it here and there only because MS Word and its imitators have that as an automatic substitution (active in the default setting)? —Tamfang (talk) 00:27, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The practice of subscripting also stems from the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic employments of runic characters. (Same with the letter 'y' in "Ye" which was a runic character called a thorn and had a [th] sound-hence the common word "The".) In either case along those lines, I am pretty sure that neither the MLA Style Manual nor the Chicago Style Manual states anything about subscripting ordinal suffixes.


 * Jtg920 (talk) 03:22, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * [Conversely, Wikipedia avoids superscripted ordinal suffixes. See MOS:ORDINAL.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 03:36, 27 June 2014 (UTC)]


 * Ordinal indicator says "style guide author Jack Lynch (Rutgers) recommends turning off automatic superscripting of ordinals in Microsoft Word, because 'no professionally printed books use superscripts.'" -- BenRG (talk) 08:22, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Luxembourgish
Anyone know of a web-based Luxembourgish&larr;&rarr;English translator? One that doesn't require downloading software and one that doesn't require payment? There's an interesting AfD I came across regarding Empire of Luxembourg, with several signs pointing to it being a hoax. I noticed it has a discussion page at the Luxembourgish Wikipedia that may be helpful, but GTranslate fails. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  18:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Serendipitously, I discovered http://www.languages-and-translation.com yesterday, via a YouTube video referral. Christine Schmit is fluent in English, and has Luxembourgish as a native language.  I suggest that you contact her to ask about payment.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 19:14, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the lead, but it turns out it won't be necessary after all. "Ermesinde vu Letzebuerg" was the name of the principle source used in the Empire of Luxembourg article so I searched for it and assumed the lbwiki article was equivalent. Well, I am a fool. :) Looking a little closer, Ermesinde appears to be a person. So the talk page isn't going to be of much consequence. It appears the article here is a hoax. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  19:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand the articles on Ermesinde, Countess of Luxembourg and on her son Henry V of Luxembourg in the English, German and Luxemburgish wikipedias and the respective discussion pages and can assure you that they do not explicitely refer to the "Empire of Luxembourg". So there is nothing in the discussion that would need to be translated. The two references in "Empire of Luxembourg" refer to books by scholars lb:Michel Margue and de:Hans Herzfeld. Perhaps they speak of an "Empire of Luxembourg" or of a vision of such an empire. Or perhaps it is a hoax after all. I do not have the books. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 23:21, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The AfD discussion might benefit from you weighing in, but that seems to be the gist: it cites two sources nobody seems to have access to and evidence for its existence is otherwise pretty scant. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  00:32, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Playing an instrument
I know several languages and I have always wondered why we "play" instruments in English. It's not a game and requires hard work, especially at advanced level. German (ein Instrument spielen) and French (jouer d'un instrument) also refer to "playing." Why do these languages perceive it like that? In Spanish we touch an instrument (tocar un instrumento), in Italian we sound an instrument (suonare uno strumento), in Chinese it's even more nuanced: We strike the piano, we blow the flute, we pull the violin and we knock the drums (although some might be possible in English, there is no other way than this to express in Chinese). --2.245.205.220 (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Because the "game" sense is just one of the several different meanings that "play" has had from the earliest times. The OED lists five groups of meanings, all found in Old English:
 * "I. Senses relating to movement, exercise, and activity", (1 - 10);
 * "II. Senses relating to recreation, pleasure, and enjoyment" (11 - 20);
 * "III. Senses relating to the performance of instrumental music", (21-24);
 * "IV. Senses relating to acting and dramatic performance", (25-31);
 * "V. Senses relating to fencing, sword-fighting, etc." (32).
 * --ColinFine (talk) 23:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * You may find the EO entry on "play" enlightening. It has to do with moving rapidly. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:38, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Latin ludere ("to play", in many of the senses also present in the English word) was certainly used of playing an instrument, so it's perhaps not surprising that other European languages came to use their corresponding words in that sense. What needs explanation is how speakers of Spanish and Italian, two of Latin's direct descendants, came to choose other words for expressing the idea. Deor (talk) 09:49, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the French, but the Spanish tocar is said to be from toc which is said to be onomatopoeia. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:16, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Presuming that jouer means "play" in French, the Spanish equivalent is jugar, which derives from Latin iocari, which is the source of the English "joke" but also means "sport" or "pastime". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:21, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You'd be deluding yourself to think that music is not a form of play or entertainment. That's actully all it's for. Anyway, in Japanese they use 'hiku' for string-based instruments (even pianos). It means 'pull', literally. For non-string-based instruments they use 'yaru', which just means 'do'. If you said 'gitaru to asobu' (I am playing with the guitar) it would literally mean you are playing with it.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  20:39, 28 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Interestingly in at least Mexican Spanish "It's your turn" in a game is te toca a ti. μηδείς (talk) 22:51, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Google Translate gives te toca a ti the idiomatic translation "your turn". Toca would seem to be a verb there, the noun form being toque. Literally I suppose it says "[It] touches to you"? And I seem to be hearing "touch" used that way in sports, more and more, meaning a "turn" with the ball, as in how many "touches" a runner, receiver, etc. get during a given game. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:05, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, it touches you. μηδείς (talk) 00:11, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Kind of like "Tag! You're 'it'!", bringing up yet another term which means "touch". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:24, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The English "touch" and its Romance Language sources are all thought to be imitative of the sound of touching something hard enough to make a sound. The word "tick" as in "tick-tock" seems to be related, or at least coincidentally arrived at for the same reason. I've heard the sound of bat hitting ball as "kind of a tock". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:00, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Touché. ←Soccer SlugsWhateverslime→ 71.20.250.51 (talk) 19:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The German cognate of to play is pflegen, whose meaning "to care for, to be concerned with" is probably closer to the original meaning of the word in Proto-Germanic. Still, I see no reason to deny the game-like aspect of expertly handling an instrument to produce organised sound – in a day and age when you can for example make your living playing Starcraft in Korea, there's nothing strange or insulting about the idea of being a professional player of a game. (Just ask an athlete or a chess pro.) If music weren't so much fun, musicians wouldn't keep pursuing this activity so stubbornly even though, as they like pointing out, it generally does not pay and the industry is in a state of disarray. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:42, 4 July 2014 (UTC)